Deeply Personal | Megan's Head

Dear Bruce Springsteen

On April 27, 2019

This is a letter to Bruce Springsteen. If you know how to help me circulate it so that it may, against all odds, get to him, please help!

Dear Bruce

I’m writing to you as a friend because that’s how it feels. That is the genius of you, I know. That is how all of your fans feel. It feels like I grew up with you and that we’ve been together, as friends ever since I met you, through a friend, when I was twelve. That is 42 years ago. It’s a lasting friendship.

You were the background to my rebellion; growing up white in Apartheid South Africa, you were the voice of my freedom, the echo of my first heartbreak, the shocking reality of my politics, the narrative of my wildness, the love song (If I Should Fall Behind) at my wedding, my solace when my father died and the poet on my inner journey.

I first saw you live in Harare at the Amnesty International concert. (It was my friends and I who had cheekily painted the ‘We love you Brian Springsteen’ banner that made you laugh. It was many years later that I saw you again, first in Cape Town and then in Johannesburg. I couldn’t bear not seeing you in my hometown and so I flew up for that concert that was like a baptism in the rain. Nothing could have prepared me for how personally I took those shows.

Your words and music have been a profound and enduring inspiration to me. So, when my play Lost Property was chosen to be read at a tiny developmental play reading festival at the Jersey City Theatre Centre on the 31 of May, I couldn’t help myself. I have been fantasising about you being there. I know that it is beyond ridiculous, and beyond all realistic expectation, but I had to ask. Bruce, if you are in that neck of the woods, and would like to come to hear my play being read, I would love to have you there.

Lost Property is a tiny two-hander dealing with land, and home, and houses, and ghosts, and gentrification, and loss. It is deeply personal, and political and also strangely whimsical. And I think you may like it.

Much love and gratitude

Megan

Good News

By megan

On April 25, 2019

In Cape Town, deeply personal, me on stage, theatre stuff, world of work, writing

Today has been a really good day from a creative point of view. There have been a series of signs that I am moving in a positive direction – not totally there yet, but moving certainly. I am working my way through getting funding for my trip to the US so I can be at the reading of my play Lost Property at the end of May, and I am preparing for a reading of it here at home before I leave (watch this space for more news of that). I am gearing up for the first ever proper performances of my piece The Deep Red Sea on the 20, and 21 May at the Alexander Bar and Café, and I am preparing for teaching a series of classes and workshops. Also, my favourite thing happens next week, also at the Alexander Bar – we are improvising from Monday to Friday in The Style High Club, a series of long form improv shows dedicated to style – film noir, SA soap, Austen, movies and musical, all made up on the spot.

But the best news of the day is that my rhyming children’s story has been picked up by a really big publisher and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I will share all the details as they evolve, but right now I am grinning, and giggling and delighted.

What’s in an Election Poster

By megan

On April 8, 2019

In Cape Town, deeply personal, political

Every time I see the “Aunty Pat for Premier” election poster I laugh. I see it a lot because it is ubiquitous on my route to and from home in Woodstock. So, I am laughing a lot, which is a good thing to be doing when I think about elections. It is a lot better than crying, which is probably what I should be doing.

There is a very particular reason for my jollity. My sister-in-law Gina Shmukler played a delightful role in Aunty Merle The Musical and my five year old niece loved that show. She loved it with all her being. She saw it three or four times, and absorbed every song and dance, and Marc Lottering as Aunty Merle is her best thing by far.

She spent 10 days in Cape Town recently and wanted to know who the lady, who looked like Aunty Merle, was in the posters on the lamp posts. We tried to explain to her that it was another Aunty, a political one, Aunty Pat, not as nice by far as Aunty Merle because she is a politician. All of this was fine by her, but she kept on asking when this Aunty’s show was. When could she see this Aunty perform? And was she as good as ‘s character Aunty Merle? No matter how hard we tried she could not get that Aunty Pat was Aunty Pat in real life. My brother explained that she was a politician and all politicians are bad, but for my niece this just meant that poor Patricia was just not as talented as Marc Lottering.

And so, every time, I laugh.

Industrial theatre, storytelling, improv news

By megan

On October 22, 2018

In deeply personal, improv, theatre stuff, world of work

I am currently working on a 15 minute industrial theatre play around AIDS and HIV awareness. I have written the script and it is really entertaining. It has to be. Audiences have terrible AIDS awareness fatigue. This two-hander has a delicious format, really cute characters, and it is very honest and forthright. It has been commissioned by a client, but I would love to sell it on to anyone who wants to do something for AIDS day on December 1. Let me know if you’d like more info, or would like to book it.

I am also doing beautiful storytelling workshops. Improv and personal narrative come together in this fun, moving and connecting space, where people get to know themselves and each other better.

And of course there is pure improv. You need this in your workspace to revolutionise how you work as a team, be co-creative and understand how important it is to be present and and an active listener.

Lastly, and deeply personally, I am offering tarot readings, either in person or over Skype. Email me to book an appointment for this lovely, focussed look at an area of your life.

All queries on

A Dream of a Beach

By megan

On October 8, 2018

In Cape Town, deeply personal, inspiration, writing

(A semi-true story. The feelings are real.)

I feel the pull back to familiarity. There is a soft, furry body lying alongside me. Early risers; those getting children to school or off early to miss the worst of the traffic slam car doors or call loudly from the street to someone still inside.

I keep my eyes closed, not ready to let go of the feelings of my dream even though the images are still to coalesce in my mind. Loss. Longing.

I dreamed of a beach.

I was on my way home, walking through familiar streets, totally confident that I knew the way. I greeted passers-by and smiled and waved. And then I took a different path between two pale and old buildings, following a kitten who had looked at me with recognition on its dirty ginger face.

Then I was staring at a beach.

I remember thinking in my dream that my street had been close to the sea, right up until a hundred years ago. Woodstock Beach had been filled with swimmers, fishermen and strollers. I remember seeing black and white photos suspended on metal wires in a trendy, retro craft gin store. And I remembered this in my dream. I remembered that I drive on Beach Road.

In my dream this was Woodstock Beach. Accessible only to me. I alone knew that it was right there, a few metres from home. Nobody in today’s world would ever find it. It was safe. Our secret.

Between the grey, crumbling dolosse birds had made nests. A white whale skeleton formed a ghost wedding arch in the sand. Gentle, pretty seaweed and crusty mussels grew in a rockpool. Another was filled with giant purple and ruby red gem stones. I looked down at my feet making soft dunes where I walked. At the water’s edge I turned around to look back. The city was a smouldering, crumbling urban monster. It was exploding in a disorganisation of more building, more development, more greed.

I saw an old woman wave at me from under the frame of a beach umbrella. She looked like she had always been there although I had only noticed her in that moment.

I wanted to stay. I started taking my clothes off to get into the water but up close the surface was densely packed with completely transparent plastic bottles.

“You can walk on it, but you can’t swim” yelled the woman. Now she was surrounded by crime tape, held by four estate agent boards. She stood up and I saw her police uniform.

I thought about leaving and my heart shuddered. If I left I would never find this secret Woodstock beach again. I started scooping the sand in my hand, the damp sand. Could I build a house here? There was nothing to make it with. A hole. I would dig a hole.

A Poem for My Gran and the World

By megan

On September 27, 2018

In deeply personal, writing

My gran

A long Craven A cigarette with two centimetres of ash

Hanging, hands free, from her lip

Would say

“Too terrible”

When she would recount the hopeless relationships

In the soapies she followed.

“Too terrible” was also for the callers who phoned in

to talk shows with their incurable aches and pains.

My gran could relate.

She said “too terrible” about the food at the function

Which was mostly inedible – she had tried all the cakes to make sure.

And a special, drawn out “too terrible” was reserved

For the fashions of the day, worn by me

The first-born grandchild with “a mind of her own, mind you”.

“Too terrible” was for how she felt after a restless night,

Or how the Joburg summer heat made sweat bead on her upper lip

Or darken her silk neckline.

And it was “too terrible” the way people were treated,

Or the way others drove, or hooted, or slammed on brakes.

My gran, whose telephone voice

And jewellery box, and teiglach I miss

Managed to capture a helpless, hilarious, and most deep humanity

In those words, “too terrible”

It’s “too terrible for words”.

Megan's Head

A place where Megan gets off her head.

Category: deeply personal (Page 2 of 99)

Dear Bruce Springsteen

Good News

What’s in an Election Poster

Industrial theatre, storytelling, improv news

A Dream of a Beach

A Poem for My Gran and the World

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